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Community paints Reseda mural controversial

A story I wrote about a mural that recently went up in Reseda has created quite a stir. Or I should say, the mural itself has created quite a stir, and I simply wrote about it.

Graffiti expert calls in to complain
Before I ask you to read it, I want you to know that I received several calls on the piece from various people, including Cheryl Onaitis, who’s quoted in the story. Onaitis is the program manager for West Valley Alliance, a nonprofit graffiti-removing organization. Ms. Onaitis was very helpful and a pleasure to talk to.

However, she called to dispute a quote attributed to her. In the story, a woman contacted Onaitis, complaining about the mural. After asking if she can call police because the woman thought the mural was an eyesore, the story quotes Onaitis as saying: “No, you can’t,” Onaitis responded. “Unless it says `kill children’ or something derogatory or racist.”

I can only say that I have the quote in my notes and it’s solid. She said it.
However, Onaitis left me a message today strongly saying she would never tell a constituent that they can’t call police. Never.

It appears what she literally said to me in the phone interview and what she meant to say (based on her message to me today) are not exactly the same. I never thought that the quote meant the woman absolutely could not call police, but that doing so in this instance wouldn’t necessarily lead anywhere. We can all call police whenever we want, after all.

Still, out of fairness to Ms. Onaitis, I wanted to mention it here. She’s somebody trying to do a vital job and it certainly wasn’t my intention to slight that effort.

One thought on “Community paints Reseda mural controversial”

Never met the young man that died, but I think the mural is great, so much better than looking at someones tagger moniker..I say that any one against it should drive the other way, I believe those streets are still going 2 ways….